Now I know how fans of baseball and football feel about the Yankees and Patriots. It's super duper boring watching Mercedes and Hamilton win over and over. The first half of the season was great before Ferrari fell apart, and it's been nice to see the odd race where someone else wins, but man, otherwise boring as hell.

As someone who hasn't watched really any F1 prior to this season, I find the fall of Ferrari in the last third of the season is the most fascinating story of the season. Was it that Ferrari bit off more than they could chew with performance in the first half and the failures were cause by that. Or was it just a string of bad luck. I don't think it bothers me that the championship ended before the final race. It's a good time to see new drivers and the potential of next year.

I don't think Ferrari made the improvements over the year that Mercedes made, but I also think they had some of the worst luck. Mercedes didn't have any bugs that I can recall, especially Hamilton. Hammy has finished every race on this year in the points, right?

New season. I thought about starting the new thread, but I mostly came in to vent and didn't want to start the new thread off with a rant.

I was excited with the move to ESPN2 and using the Sky feed. The first commercial break may have actually killed my desire to watch F1 until F1 TV becomes available. The problem is that ESPN goes to commercial, but Sky doesn't. Which means the broadcast just keeps going during commercials. Obviously, the NBCSN broadcast went to commercial too, and watching in a postage stamp window was annoying, but they knew they were going to commercial, and if something happened during the break, they went back and recapped.

Sky obviously doesn't do that. So the first break of the race, the commercial came with with the announcer mid-sentence, which was weird enough. Then I saw them showing a car stopped on the track. No idea what happened, and by the time the break ended, the announcers had moved on, so I still have no clue what happened. I've got no interest in watching a race where that kind of crap happens.

I guess I'm hoping they come out with the streaming service quickly, and that it's good. At least I can save a few bucks on my TV bill by dropping to a package that doesn't include ESPN.

New season. I thought about starting the new thread, but I mostly came in to vent and didn't want to start the new thread off with a rant.

FTFY

Chaz wrote:

I was excited with the move to ESPN2 and using the Sky feed. The first commercial break may have actually killed my desire to watch F1 until F1 TV becomes available. The problem is that ESPN goes to commercial, but Sky doesn't. Which means the broadcast just keeps going during commercials. Obviously, the NBCSN broadcast went to commercial too, and watching in a postage stamp window was annoying, but they knew they were going to commercial, and if something happened during the break, they went back and recapped.

Sky obviously doesn't do that. So the first break of the race, the commercial came with with the announcer mid-sentence, which was weird enough. Then I saw them showing a car stopped on the track. No idea what happened, and by the time the break ended, the announcers had moved on, so I still have no clue what happened. I've got no interest in watching a race where that kind of crap happens.

I guess I'm hoping they come out with the streaming service quickly, and that it's good. At least I can save a few bucks on my TV bill by dropping to a package that doesn't include ESPN.

Yeah, that's the exact problem I was having with it. Hopefully F1 TV gets worked out before the next race.

That doesn't even hit the fact that I didn't get to see the second half of the race. I have my DVR set up to do a season record with an extra hour tacked on just in case. It's sometimes spotty though, so I've been in the habit of manually confirming the recordings are set up before the weekend.

I did that this week, things were fine. I got qualifying no problem. This morning, we start up the race. First thing, I notice it's only an hour and a half recorded. That ain't right, but maybe they just start right into the race. Nah, instead, we get the screwup with the pre-race, with a long static shot, then cutting to some other show, then cutting back to the pre-race, all this for 30-40 minutes, and then the race starts.

So even before I realized that yeah, I was right to be worried about Sky's no commercials and ESPN's commercials, I knew I wasn't even going to get to see the whole race.

Worst part is, I don't know if I need to blame DirecTV, ESPN's stupid listing, or the DVR.

I am very much a casual fan, and holy hell, Ferrari appear to have taken all the stupid pills this season.

I remember the beginning of the season, when everyone was talking about how Ferrari had the faster car and this could be a really tough season for Mercedes. And now they've basically escorted Hamilton to another title.

I am very much a casual fan, and holy hell, Ferrari appear to have taken all the stupid pills this season.

I remember the beginning of the season, when everyone was talking about how Ferrari had the faster car and this could be a really tough season for Mercedes. And now they've basically escorted Hamilton to another title.

Such is the Ferrari of recent. They did the same thing last year, and were no where to be seen the year before. They figured out how to make a good car at the beginning of the season, but they don't know how to keep momentum.

I'd just like to see a season where it wasn't Hamilton and Mercedes winning as a near given. It's getting real boring. The driver changes next year could be interesting, or it could be like watching Alonzo trying to nurse a terrible car to a middle of the pack finish.

Ah, I missed this thread when I came looking last week -- only found this other one.

As I was saying over there, the Netflix documentary on the 2018 season was not just amazingly well produced, but it was very effective marketing, and finally managed to draw my wife and I into watching the sport this year.

Ah, I missed this thread when I came looking last week -- only found this other one.

This is the same thread from a few years ago. I just update the year at the beginning of every season. When you looked it up last week it did still say 2018. We can use whichever thread. Probably should choose one though.

zeroKFE wrote:

As I was saying over there, the Netflix documentary on the 2018 season was not just amazingly well produced, but it was very effective marketing, and finally managed to draw my wife and I into watching the sport this year.

Man, poor Grosjean really just can't catch a break, can he?

I think Grosjean was relieved by the wheel failure. It meant he didn't get a chance to put it in the wall by himself. Damn it Ericsson.